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Autopsies can detect clinically important diagnostic discrepancies and help an organization improve the quality of care, according to a new report released by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).
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Patient safety can be jeopardized when the transitions or handoffs that occur during patient care are not managed effectively. Many errors come from slips that occur during the exchange of materials, people, and/or supplies.
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Quality improvement projects can be especially challenging if you try to implement them on a systemwide basis across many health care institutions, but a diabetes project in Iowa shows that it can be done if you give people the tools and let individual organizations decide how best to use them.
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Several important changes were announced to Joint Commission on Accreditation of Health-care Organizations surveyors at a recent training session in Chicago, including new definitions for some types of sentinel events.
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How great is the risk of a smallpox attack? That question underlies the current campaign to vaccinate health care workers and military personnel and to offer the vaccinia vaccine to those who want it in the general public. The benefit of those vaccines cant be calculated without an estimate of the risk both of smallpox and of vaccine-related adverse events. Researchers at the RAND Corp. in Santa Monica, CA, have attempted to do just that.
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When needlestick injuries occur, work practices often are a contributing factor. Training is an essential component of maintaining safe practices. And while bloodborne pathogen training may focus on specific protective devices, it also needs to address and correct some common misconceptions.
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Death rates from influenza are rising with the aging of the U.S. population, and the virus now kills an average of 36,000 people a year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The new data underscore the need to protect vulnerable patients from nosocomial spread by vaccinating health care workers, public health experts say.
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Employees are likely to have a wide range of questions about caring for their injection site and protecting others from contracting the disease. Here are a few questions and answers provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
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If your vaccinated employees have red, swollen arms, swollen lymph glands, and fever, are they having an adverse reaction? Probably not, says William Schaffner, MD, professor and chairman of the Department of Preventive Medicine at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, TN.
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Add more safeguards to ensure that the smallpox vaccination program is as safe as possible, a federal panel of medical experts urged the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta.
